Friday, November 30, 2018

Lake Louise Family Photoshoot + our Christmas Cards

So this post is incredibly long overdue when you consider that these family photos were taken back in July. However…. I’m sure most could agree that our life has been a little crazy (with the California surgery and postop recovery) up until just recently; and so around the time things began to FINALLY slow down just a little – it came time to order our Christmas cards, and I decided to hold off on posting these photos a little while longer.

For context, the months leading up to Evanna’s first surgery down in California was filled with a lot of stress, anxiety and quite a lot of fear of the potential risks that we were consenting to. Well after a little “cry on the internet” (quoting Nick there lol) about the absolute nightmare of trying to coordinate travel plans just to get Evanna down to California in the first place (after experiencing a ton of dead ends, our incredible social worker here in Calgary was able to knock some sense into a doctor or two, and emphasize that due to how much oxygen Evanna was on, a commercial flight was not possible whatsoever, and she absolutely required a private medical "hospital to hospital" transport), my good friend and family photographer asked if we’d like to take some family photos before we left. I of course jumped at the opportunity, and while discussing location ideas, she mentioned she had been doing lots of sessions out in the Banff and Lake Louise area, and asked if Evanna could handle the short drive out there. I stated that Evanna could definitely handle the drive, and because I didn’t want to take up any more of Jennie’s valuable time, I inquired if she already had sessions booked in that area that we could just piggyback onto, and did it on a day that both Nick had off and when Jennie was already going to be in the area for another photoshoot.

The awesome result of doing this photoshoot out at Lake Louise, was when I showed Evanna’s Stanford/LPCH nurses pictures of what she normally looks like (people tend to look like crap postop to say the least... so I like to always show "normal" pictures of Evanna to the nurses that are taking care of her in hospital), it was also a neat way to show them where we’re from and the beautiful mountain backdrops that exist here in Alberta. If anything, while a handful of staff had heard of Calgary (only because of the 88’ Olympics... so maybe we should host again one day soon lol), most of the people we talked to down in California really only knew of Vancouver, Toronto and Banff when talking about our home Canada – so I often had to say that if traveling to Banff or Lake Louise, you usually had to fly into Calgary to get there lol. Though I know the world doesn’t revolve around me, I guess despite the size of city (and the fact that it’s like the 4th largest city in all of Canada), I was shocked at how many people in California (at least the hospital staff we came across) hadn’t heard of Calgary before. I had to constantly state that we're basically just north of Montana, and seriously less than a 3 hour plane ride from San Francisco (because most people assumed we had come really far to get to Stanford... like the East Coast/Toronto perhaps? And not realize that we're a lot closer than they originally thought). Oh well.... at least I now know that we've educated a few more Californians, and had many state that Calgary/Banff/Lake Louise is now on their bucket list to visit in the future by the time we were transferred back to Calgary.

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Anyways, though I’ve already posted and shared several of these photos on both my personal Instagram and family Facebook Page from our July Lake Louse photoshoot with Jennie of Guenard Photography here’s more of my favourite shots for your viewing pleasure!

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And now for the photo that we chose to put on our Chatbooks Christmas Card. Chatbooks has a ton of amazing holiday card layouts to choose from -- both portrait and landscape options, and even templates that allows for multiple photos to be added. I personally love layouts that allow for one large photo with simple text, as our parents + grandparents tend to display these cards all year long, and so it's something I keep in mind when choosing which design I'm going to use.

What I particularly loved -- was the FREE option to add a few more little candid photos on the back with a little holiday message. Chatbooks also includes envelopes with a return address printed on them for FREE! Seriously how amazing is that?! With the code kierra20, you can get 20% off your entire order... and with tomorrow being the December 1st -- this is something I would personally order before the end of the week! Click HERE to view + shop their holiday card designs!